Sprouting Roots From My Food Produce

Aren't these roots beautiful?

With the "lockdown" directive in place in South Africa, I decided to use the remains of my fresh produce when I cook to sprout seedlings for my garden.

I've been doing that with my onions and potato peels and things are coming along rather nicely.

Sprouting the onions turned out to be easier than I expected: all I had to do was to put the onion end into a cup half full of water with the bottom end down on a window sill. Every time I use an onion, that's where the bottom end ends up.

I change the water every other day. I'm going to allow the onion roots to continue to grow until the bulbs are ready for transplanting.

Yesterday I also started to plant my potato crop in a big metal half-tank. I used to compost scraps and bits of grass in the tank back in the day, which I never got to use in the garden.

So now I have very rich soil for the beginning of the potato tank. Wish me luck! I've never successfully grown potatoes.

Finally Got The Potato Crop Right!

Today we dug up a big bowl of potatoes...enough potatoes to last us (4 adults) for a week, with a bit leftover. They came from 3 plants, a miniscule fraction to the number we planted. If the rest of what we dig up looks this good, and they don't get any disease, we will have a constant supply of potatoes through February, I think. Maybe longer.

I'm planning to plant another batch of potato seeds in the coming weeks (the last planting opportunity). Hopefully we'll harvest that crop by the end of April, extending my supply through Winter. Unless our rate of consumption of them is higher than I estimated, of course.

I'm very excited about this success, because my family consumes a lot of potatoes and so far, potatoes have been among the few vegetables that I've had to consistently buy.

Site selection: I've tried various options to grow potatoes - car tyres, containers, designated areas to build towers and just planting plain into the ground. I know other people have seen great success with the the tyre/container/tower options, and I wish I could too, because it's a very good use of space. However, so far the only crops that have grown well are the ones planted directly into beds. I'm OK with that for now, because I have a reasonable amount of space. But I still want to make a success of the other options in the future.

Soil Preparation: I've tried to grow potatoes numerous times, with little success and I've come to realise that a bit part of the problem was the lack of soil preparation. This time, we mixed the soil with manure, let it sit for a while, planted and then mulched very heavily. So even when it was dry and rain was not coming, the plants still continued to grow reasonably well. So yeah.. that advice about soil preparation and mulching?  Do it!! It really made a difference.

The Planting Process: I struggled to source potato seeds locally, so eventually I just took a bunch from my kitchen supply, bought from the supermarket and stuck them in the beds. We planted the seeds in rows around 12 inches apart.

Caring For The Plants: As the plants grew, we dug the soil from between the rows and built mounds to cover the tubers. This is a semi-arid area and temperatures can get into the mid-thirties ( degrees Celcius) even though it's Spring, so put on a lot of mulch over the soil every time we expanded the mound and made sure that the plants were watered well. We were fortunate enough not to have to deal with potato diseases like dry rot.

Harvesting Potatoes: Generally a crop is ready for harvesting after 10 weeks of planting. For now though, we're slowly digging up a few plants when we need some, but I know that closer to winter, we're going to have to dig up everything when vines die.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to try out a number of recipes for the potatoes. My favourite is potato salad. I love the tuber creamy with mayo, chives, black pepper  with optional egg/chopped cucumber/ peas/bacon. This time I went with boiled eggs from our hens, and the salad was accompanied by pot roast chicken, with a bit of fresh chilli adding a bit of a kick to the chicken to contrast nicely with the salad.

I used the drippings from the roast to make an onion/tomato/kale dish to go with the meal. Waaay too much fat I know, but it was delicious. The ingredients also came from the garden.

P.S. Today my younger SIL gave me a nice phone that has a decent camera, so I'll start taking more photos from the garden and posting them here.

Is It Safe To Grow Potatoes In Car Tyres

Source: Brighton Permaculture

Last year I collected a lot of car tyres, which I planned to use to grow potatoes in an arid area of my backyward which was ugly and unusable, but which is too close to the house and foot traffic to ignore.

I also wanted to grow potatoes on a large scale, as my family eats a large quantity of them.

I'd read about, and seen a lot of respected gardeners on TV advocate the use of tyres in growing potatoes.

Even corporates funded schools and other feeding schemes to start gardens using garden tyres, and no one mentioned that there could be a problem with the system.

That is, until I mentioned my plan on the Simple Living Forum and one of the members argued against it, citing the potential leaking of chemical toxins into the soil and my food.

My gut response was, "of course it's safe! Why would no one speak up if there is an issue with it?"

Looking For Seed Potatoes

sage bush outside my kitchen

It's planting time and I want to aggressively grow potatoes. The problem is that the vendors who nornally carry seeds don't carry seed potatoes and neither do the any of the local (Rustenburg-based) nurseries that I visited today. What a bummer!

I know I could source them online, but I didn't want to go that route, as it would take too long. Urgh! That is soo frustrating!

While I was at the nurseries, I also bought a small bush of rosemary. I had a rosemary around a year ago. Unfortunately, I killed it. Not sure what I did wrong. So we try again.


I also got a small sage bush to add to the two that are thriving outside my kitchen (love the flowers), some seedlings for green peppers, spring onions and another variety of tomato.

I'm going to plant these just outside my kitchen, so I can grab them when I'm cooking and need something quickly.

Oh, and if a nursery owner from Rustenburg ends up reading this post, or if you live in the general area and know where I can get seed potatoes, please email me.  Please. I would be so grateful!

Monthly Planting Plan: What To Grow In The North West Province This January

I found a vegetable and her planting plan online, developed by Organic Seeds and I like it. The plan is appropriate for Summer Rainfall areas, of which the North West province is one of them.

Most of the are vegetables that we like and I want to grow, so I'm going to follow it very closely this January. Here are some of the vegetables I'm going to grow:

Growing Potatoes in Tyres

I also use tyres to grow seedlings for some of my veggies

I've finally started  growing potatoes in tyres. So far what I've done is:

• Pick a location that will give your plants full sun.
• Collect old tyres from the dump. If there aren't any, ask your local garage/car repair shop. They may have some and they'd be quite happy to hand them over.
• Lay the tyres in my chosen spot. This area is sunny and near the kitchen and water tap, which  means that in theory, I should be able to water the patch any time I want without hassle.
• Collect rich soil from an old hole where we used to dump our garbage, back when the municipality didn't collect. The area doesn't have have very good soil (mostly hard compacted clay) and t was easier to collect soil elsewhere instead of trying to dig and doctor the area soil.
• Filled up the entire inside of the tyres with topsoil.
• Take four seed potatoes and place them 2 inches down in the soil.

It rained quite steadily in the past couple of weeks, so I'm optimistic that the potatoes will thrive. Maybe.